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BOOKEND; The Original 'Valley' Girl

IN 1963, recovering from a radical mastectomy and 44 years old, Jacqueline Susann made a pact with God: Give me another 10 years to become a best-selling author and I'll die in peace. God was more than generous. In the next 11 years, not only did three of Susann's books land on the top of the best-seller list, but the first of them, ''Valley of the Dolls'' (1966), with sales of 29 million, ranks with the Bible as one of the most widely distributed books of all time. Susann, however, didn't live up to her end of the bargain. Once she had fame, she wanted respect, and respect was much harder to come by. Critics attributed the astonishing success of ''Valley'' to relentless marketing. Susann herself, with her skintight pink and purple Pucci outfits, spiky false eyelashes, gutter mouth and crass careerism, was considered something of a joke in literary circles. Truman Capote called her a truck driver in drag, and then apologized to truck drivers. An article in Harper's ventured that she was ''a national phenomenon and we are stuck with her.''

Susann's death in 1974 did little to improve her standing. Like the careers of its heroines, three women who rose to the pinnacle of show business in the 1950's and then descended into its valleys of overdoses, ''sleep cures'' and suicide, the fall of ''Valley'' was nearly as steep as its rise. Susann, her book and the campy 1969 film version (starring Patty Duke, Sharon Tate and Barbara Parkins) were remaindered as items of kitsch, nourished by a mostly gay cult. (At V.O.D. parties, guests come dressed as Susann or her characters, and jellybean ''dolls'' are served as hors d'oeuvres; at screenings, regulars call out the best lines. There is an on-line ''Dead Jackie Quarterly.'' All of which has led cultural studies courses to tackle the book's post-structuralist significance as a pop classic.)

Now Grove Press has reissued ''Valley,'' dressed to kill in a hot pink cover, and new editions of Susann's two other top best sellers, ''The Love Machine'' and ''Once Is Not Enough,'' are coming this winter. Promotion for ''Valley,'' though, can hardly be said to inspire literary respect. Famed drag queens have been called upon to do readings in gay bookstores; Barbara Parkins, who played Anne in the movie, and Ted Casablanca, the cable television host, have appeared at tributes. Grove did arrange a New School seminar on Susann (titled ''The Other Jackie''), though the discussion focused mostly on her marketing savvy and appeal to gay men.

But in the late 60's, it wasn't gay men who made ''Valley'' the best-selling novel of all time. It was women, especially young women. ''Valley of the Dolls'' was a combination ''Peyton Place'' and ''That Girl'' -- it gave women of all ages the belief that anything was possible, that they could have interesting lives in exciting cities.

Of course, the marketing of ''Valley'' was brilliant. In fact, it was revolutionary. In the early 60's, most authors expected little more than a small party at the publisher's apartment and maybe one or two strategically placed ads. Susann, along with her husband, Irving Mansfield, a producer and press agent, understood better than anyone since perhaps Walt Whitman that (a) a book is a product like anything else and (b) the best way to promote this particular product is to make its creator into a ''star.'' With an energy level never seen before in publishing, Susann and Mansfield carefully orchestrated a legendary campaign: they hired Hollywood publicity experts, made hundreds of radio, television and bookstore appearances, arranged for celebrity-jammed parties and plants in the gossip columns, pushed for ads on the entertainment pages and so on. Susann also understood the value of ingratiating oneself with those who are involved with the actual selling: she's said to have sent every book distributor and clerk an autographed copy accompanied by a personal note, and visited the teamsters at dawn in every city on her tour to offer Danish pastries as they unloaded ''Valley'' from their trucks.

Yet while Susann's promotional activity helped to get ''Valley'' noticed and bought, it did not make it a book women wanted to read. What did women in the mid-60's want? Liberation -- from the sterile suburb, the endless housework, the dull job, the even duller husband. ''Valley'' showed that men are not the only ones who can have dreams. There was also lots of sex, and what got ''Valley'' banned from many a household was that Susann's heroines actually liked it. They even sought it out from time to time. The book was also brimming with pills -- pink and red and green ''dolls'' that the characters (based loosely on the lives of Judy Garland, Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe) took to help them go to sleep, get up, lose weight and gain some semblance of a stable existence.

But I don't think this Enquirer-like glimpse of the glamour elite made ''Valley'' a book women couldn't put down. As an overprotected prepubescent in the early 70's, I would sneak off to read two books whenever I needed mental ventilation -- ''Portnoy's Complaint'' because of the men (hey, I was young) and ''Valley of the Dolls'' because of the women. Susann's heroines were hardly paragons of autonomy: one kills herself rather than go through a mastectomy; one is so addicted to sex and Seconals that she gets committed to a sanitarium; one stays with a man who ostentatiously cheats on her. But Jennifer, Neely and Anne were also strong and ambitious and went after what they wanted. Feistiness is inspiring.

There's no question, though, that the feistiest character Susann created was herself. She became one of the richest women in America at a time when women were still expected to marry their dreams. And while her gender-bent persona -- ultrafeminine exterior, ultramasculine interior -- no doubt explains her popularity with some gay men, it was also what made her so appealing to women.

Moreover, Susann had a special kind of toughness, what used to be called dignity, which stemmed from a staunch desire to separate the personal from the public. Susann craved publicity and would have done anything for it -- except sacrifice her privacy. According to ''Lovely Me'' (1987), a very good biography by Barbara Seaman, Susann had a rather interesting sexual history, including affairs with Eddie Cantor, Carole Landis and possibly Ethel Merman. And she had her share of highly exploitable personal problems -- drug addictions, an autistic son, who had to be institutionalized, and recurring breast cancer, which ultimately killed her. But when she went on Merv Griffin or Mike Douglas, all she talked about was her book.

This type of restraint is virtually unheard of today, especially among female authors of so-called high literature, who in their memoirs and treatises appear to be vying to expose their problems, fetishes and body parts. Such exhibitionism is of course an inevitable result of turning books into commodities. What's interesting is that it isn't really working. These books certainly get noticed, but they don't become big sellers and their authors don't often achieve celebrity status. By contrast, while it would be difficult to call ''commercial'' fiction geared toward women art, it is certainly popular -- the new Borders on 57th Street carries nearly 2,000 titles in its romance section. Using the Susann formula, these books entertain through glamour, lust and power-hungry women, who are not inclined to whine and complain about their problems. Nor, generally, do they self-destruct midway through.

Unfortunately for Susann, the increasing appeal of truly strong-willed women is probably largely responsible for the drop-off in sales of ''Valley'' during the 70's (it went out of print in 1982) and will probably undermine its ability to capture a mass audience today. For me at least, rereading the book 25 years later inspired no fruitful escape fantasies. Actually, I found it boring. Not only were all its flaws -- the wooden, cliche-ridden dialogue, one-dimensional characters, illogical plot line -- now numbingly obvious, but the self-destructiveness of the female characters was outright irritating. I wanted them to grow up, get a life, act like, well, women.

Nevertheless, Susann does deserve plaudits for having given women what they needed at a pivotal point in feminist history. She also deserves commendation for teaching (for better or worse) the male publishing establishment a thing or two about how to sell a book. And she deserves compliments for doing both without exploiting her personal traumas. She was a gifted storyteller. To be sure, that doesn't award her the status of Andy Warhol or the Beatles, as she had prophesied, or the literary respect she so desperately craved. But it should certainly let her rest in peace.